Looking back at Ross Perot’s presidential campaign, 20 years after he announced candidacy

Texas on the Potomac regularly presents guest commentary from across the political spectrum. Today, we offer a guest blog from David M. Walker, former Comptroller General of the United States and CEO of the Comeback America Initiative. He is a prominent proponent of bipartisan deficit reduction.

Ross Perot is honored in Kansas in 2010. (AP photo)

Today marks the 20th anniversary of Ross Perot’s first announced run for president. There are striking comparisons between the state of the country in 1992 and today—and a recognition that, once again, Americans and federal elected officials need to wake up to critical challenges facing our nation.

Ross Perot earned the gratitude of both supporters and non-supporters of his candidacy by focusing the national debate on several key issues that might otherwise have been ignored. He offered a direct, fact-based and common sense approach to these issues, along with a call to action to address them. We desperately need this sort of truth-telling today.

Ross Perot ran on four key issues other than NAFTA — fiscal irresponsibility on the part of both Democrats and Republicans, political dysfunction in Washington, lack of trust in government, and declining confidence in the future. Today, we are worse off on all four counts. Therefore, we need another Ross Perot style issue campaign to provide the American people with the facts, the truth, the tough choices, and some sensible solutions to restore fiscal sanity.

Many people feel an independent candidate cannot ever win the presidency. They may or may not be right. But no one can deny that Ross Perot had a major impact in 1992, even though he did not receive a single electoral vote. His focus on fiscal responsibility made the presidential debates more substantive, and resulted in President Clinton making fiscal responsibility a top priority for his administration. The result was that great progress was made between 1993 and 2000 in connection with fiscal responsibility and other key challenges facing America. In the years since, all that progress has been lost. It is essential that all of us embrace the huge challenge of our time—just as Ross Perot urged us to do two decades ago—in order to ensure that our collective future will be better than our past.